It’s All About the O-Line

I can still remember this moment as if it happened yesterday.

I was watching a NY Giants game on CBS TV during the end of the 1983 season. The Giants were awful that year, going 3-12-1. As the “Jints” were about to finish another bad loss, Pat Summerall asked John Madden where he would start to rebuild a team from scratch.

Madden didn’t wait a second with his answer: “offensive line.”

I was just 13 at the time, and his answer was confusing to kid who always thought football was about QB’s, RB’s and maybe a sack master D-liner or two.

But Madden went on to explain that without a decent O-line, everything else breaks down on a football team.

When the offensive line isn’t working, everything else on the team starts to break down.

The QB gets harassed and he starts to look terrible. The running game can’t get the job done. The defense ends up back on the field way too long. You lose games.

Madden made the simple point that there is no one unit on a team that’s more important than the offensive line. And he was right.

Columbia’s troubled teams of the recent past have all been plagued with weak offensive line play.

When Norries Wilson took over in 2006, the lack of experience on the O-line was shocking. By 2009, the Lion O-line was a lot better but even though Wilson had been a star O-lineman in college and even though he had successfully coached the front five at other schools, Columbia was never able to field a consistently strong O-line for more than a season or two.

Pete Mangurian did not inherit a great offensive line either, BUT the cupboard was much less bare for him than it was for Wilson six years before. His first order of business was to mysteriously marginalize and bench Scott Ward, CU’s lone returning All Ivy O-lineman in favor of much younger and less experienced players. And all of that was BEFORE the “grand experiment” of using lighter and supposedly stronger lineman began.

Like Wilson, Mangurian comes in with specific experience coaching offensive linemen… in his case in the NFL. But this experience has yielded much worse results. I feel for CU O-line coach Ed Argast, who I believe is probably being micromanaged by Mangurian and rendered almost useless.

I realize Fordham was a beast of a team to block. Monmouth was a formidable opponent too. And I know Princeton is no slouch… but if we don’t see real improvement this week on the O-line, (and by “improvement,” I mean giving the Lions a chance to win), then we’re officially in a crisis mode in the specific area where we all knew Columbia needed to improve the most coming into this season.

And if we don’t see different play calling to ease the O-line pass protection weakness, we may be witnessing a dangerous insanity in action on the sidelines. Putting our players in harm’s way like this simply because the coach can’t or won’t make a change to his system is criminally negligent because the safety of his players is at stake.

I know the Columbia football fan base isn’t huge, but this blog has always been solid proof that it is not dead. So I ask you: how much failure are you willing to accept in the one area where the Head Coach promised he was working the hardest? Will you sit by and still prescribe more waiting if our QB is sacked 5-6 times against Princeton on Saturday? Or will you demand that something be done?

This current scenario is EXACTLY what I was worried would result from the secretive, defensive, yes men-surrounded coach search process that yielded the Mangurian hire. Am I calling for his firing already? Of course not… BUT the parameters and the specific problems need to be publicly identified for anyone who isn’t listening.

Dianne Murphy needs to be put on notice by someone other than just me. The hiring process for Mangurian was not acceptable by any reasonable standard. Her only saving grace would have been if Mangurian could turn the team around. He isn’t doing that yet, and worse… we’re seeing a regression in the most key part of the team.

Notice that I am not even demanding wins anymore; I’m demanding SANITY. It’s insane not to change the offensive strategies to protect our players and avoid 30+-point losses.

The number for Bellevue Hospital in NYC is (212) 562-4141. If we don't see a lot more running plays Saturday at Princeton, it's time to call that number and get the guys with the white coats and the nets to take the coach away.

This is getting ugly fast, and it has nothing to do with the fans and little to do with the players. This is about the coaching, the administrators and the few, but sadly all too influential alumni apologists for them.

If you're a parent or a fan who thinks this is all too harsh, let me be the first to ask you to call Trevor McDonagh's dad and explain why you think he should keep getting the snot kicked out of him every week. Call Sean Brackett's dad and explain why it was okay for him to get batted around last season. Call Brett Nottingham's parents and explain why it was okay for him to run for his life right off the bat and end up with a broken wrist, (and frankly, he's lucky that's all it was. On another play or two, it looked like he was going to lose his head... literally).

We all get that we still have a young O-line that could get better in time. But what none of us should get or accept is a system that doesn't properly account for that weakness. The emotional pain every fan in the stands felt when McDonagh was strip sacked on Saturday wasn't just because of the result of the play, but it also because of the play call itself. 

So let’s just be clear about what any sane person wants to see for Columbia football in the next 2-3 games:

-O-line play needs to improve

-Play-calling needs to change to adjust to the O-line situation

Simple as that.

If we don’t see this, then something is very, very wrong here and it needs to be fixed.

There is no “W” in “system,” (unless you turn the “M” upside down).

You can all decide what the “M” stands for.